William Hill Overview and History

Updated: 15.08.2025

The biggest betting brand in the world is William Hill. The company has 2,325 betting shops in the UK alone. It also operates an online gambling site available in 24 languages and 10 currencies. From a single web presence and a single player account, the site offers a smorgasbord of gambling options: sports betting; horse racing; betting on financial instruments; casino, poker and bingo offerings; and a variety of skill and arcade games. All of these components of the online operation can be verified because the company is publicly traded and listed on the London Stock Exchange.

William Hill (founder) Born in 1903

The story of William Hill begins with the birth of its founder and namesake, William Hill, on July 16, 1903. He was born in Birmingham, England, the second of 13 children in a very strict family. He attended Oldknow Road School from the age of 5, but left at 12 to work on his uncle's farm. Later, certainly throughout his childhood, he worked for the BSA Works in Birmingham. His home life and working life were cramped, he was certainly rebellious about both, and at 16 he lied about his age and jumped on the wagon to join the Black and Tans.

It is said that a young William Hill fell in love with horse racing and bookmaking. It was while working with the BSA that he was introduced to betting. While serving with the Black and Tans in Mallow, County Cork, Ireland, he spent his free time taking bets at Moss Foley's pub. After his service, he returned to England and worked as a bookmaker on the side for a while. In 1934, he took the plunge and opened a betting shop in London. Shortly thereafter, he expanded his operation and began taking bets on horse racing and other sporting events, not only from his shop, but from a much larger, England-wide clientele.

Hill's first foray into legal bookmaking took place in 1925 when he worked as an on-course bookmaker at the tracks in Birmingham. His venture did not last long, however, as he failed to place a number of significant bets and lost almost all of his initial capital. By 1929, he was living in London and had begun taking bets on greyhounds, which were then operating in various locations under bookmaking licenses. This venture was certainly more profitable and allowed Hill to make some substantial investments. The most notable of these was when he became part owner of Northolt Park, a facility where money could be made by booking bets on races (the facility later became famous for the number of pony races that took place there).

William Hill (Company) Founded 1934

In 1934, William Hill opened his first off-book betting shop in Park Lane, London. This was the beginning of the company known today as William Hill. At the time, cash bookmaking was still illegal. Hill took advantage of a loophole in the law, which required "credit only" betting, by having punters submit checks (in person or by mail) weeks in advance. These were not cashed until after the event had taken place, making it completely legal, while also retaining legal recourse against any bounced checks.

Hill also built his business on trust. At the time, gambling debts were not legally enforceable, so bookmakers didn't even have to legally pay their customers. Although there were many scams, by the 1960s he was serving some 500,000 customers because of his reputation as a businessman who paid winners and didn't cheat people.

The Invention of Fixed Odds Football Betting

In 1944, William Hill became the first bookmaker to offer fixed odds football betting. The story of Ladbrokes, as told elsewhere, often fails to give it its due. While Ladbrokes was undoubtedly the first UK licensed bookmaker to offer fixed odds, William Hill was doing so as a credit bookmaker long before that. In fact, court records show that he did it before Ladbrokes, and that he successfully sued them in the early '60s for copying his ticket. Being a good sport, he only asked for £1 in damages plus costs, which was awarded to him by the House of Lords.

William Hill as a Breeder

By the late 1930s, William Hill had become the first self-made millionaire bookmaker. As he continued to build his bookmaking empire, he developed a passion for horse breeding. In 1943, he purchased Nimbus, a horse that went on to win the 1949 Two Thousand Guineas and the Derby. In 1945, Hill bought Sezincote Stud in Gloucestershire, whose horses won the 1953 Derby. He also won a Classic with a horse named Cantelo in the 1959 St. Leger and the Gimcrack Stake and Champagne Stake in 1958 with Be Careful.

William Hill the First Ever PLC Bookmaker

In 1954, a man named William Hill took his business and moved it into a shell company known as Holder's Investment Trust to give himself a chance to become the first bookmaker ever to be listed on the London Stock Exchange. Between 1955 and 1961, he sold some of his shares for more than £5 million.

William Hill Personal Life

To explain William Hill's later decision to enter the betting business, one must first understand his personal life. In 1923 he married Ivy Burley (known as Daisy), a hairdresser from Birmingham. The following year they had their first and only child, Kathleen Hill (Bubbles), who later became today's Kathleen Lavinia. She is said to have died at a painfully young age (37), which makes some wonder about the blessings of life insurance.

"To the glory of God and in loving memory of their daughter, Kathleen Lavinia, born February 10, 1924, who died November 27, 1961. This church was renovated and refurnished in 1963 by William and Ivy Hill."

Hill was not a greedy, cold-hearted bookmaker. During his lifetime, he raced and bred horses with passion, took regular fishing trips, and sponsored youth cricket leagues. He was a devout Roman Catholic and a socialist. When betting shops were legalized in Britain on May 1, 1961, he was outspoken in his opposition. He went so far as to call them a cancer on society that preyed on the working man. To him, betting was a recreational activity and competition for those who could afford it. He was a good bookmaker and made millions many times over in his lifetime through hard work, trust and running an honest business.

By 1966, however, betting shops had become so prevalent in the UK that traditional bookmakers had no choice but to adapt. Hill began to invest in the betting shop empire we know today. He hung up his entrepreneurial boots in 1970 and died the following year.

Ownership After William Hill’s Death

Following the death of William Hill on October 16, 1971, the company became part of Sears Plc. Many articles on the history of William Hill associate it with the Sears Holdings Group, which has 4,000 retail locations under the Sears and Kmart brand names. This is NOT the same Sears. The Sears that took over William Hill is a British conglomerate in the shoe retailing business. Its current brands include Barratts and Priceless Shoes. Under Sears ownership, the company grew to 1,800 legal betting shops by 1988, along with expansion into other territories.

In 1989, William Hill was purchased by Brent Walker. In the same year, they became the official betting company for the PGA European Tour, with on-course betting shops. Throughout the 1990s, betting shops in Britain became more socially acceptable. They were no longer required to have blacked out windows and could now display their odds and advertisements for all to see. They were given the green light to open on Sundays - the ban no longer applied. And for the first time, they could advertise on a large scale in newspapers, on television and on the radio. Private scratchcards - those mini-lotteries you can play in conjunction with the state-run ones - were soon offered in William Hill shops.

With gambling now a part of everyone's life, Walker made sure to profit from it, selling the large Altman (Grand Bookmaking Companies) to Nomura for £700 million. Two years later, in 1999, they sold the whole company to Cinven and CVC Partners for £825 million. Finally, in 2002, Walker's company, William Hill, was successfully floated on the London Stock Exchange for about £1 billion.

William Hill Online

In 2000, William Hill started an offshore phone betting operation. It used a call center in Ireland, where the operation could use Internet betting for a tax of only 3%. In the same year, they became the first UK bookmaker to offer tax-free betting over the internet. Oddly enough, despite being known to all living punters as William, they had to use the domain willhill.com for internet betting. The williamhill.com domain was already being used by a winery in California. The winery stopped using it in late 2005, and William Hill, the bookmaker, acquired it in 2009, redirecting the brand they had built.

William Hill was, of course, already the world's largest betting brand and its evolution into an online entity was a natural progression at that point. A multilingual online betting site was something of a novelty back in 2000 - many punters still used the telephone to place their bets, but not at William Hill. They made their online betting platform available in nine languages when they made the full transition to offering their betting services online. These languages were English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Norwegian and Finnish. William Hill segmented their market offerings quite a bit, targeting these nine language groups across the globe.

A successful flotation on the London Stock Exchange in 2002 was followed by a series of acquisitions. In September 2002, William Hill purchased the Sunderland Greyhound Stadium. Comfortably in the black, the company enjoyed a burst of optimism and seemed hungry for additional assets. Less than a year later, in March 2003, it added Brough Park Greyhound Stadium to its portfolio. But the big prize was yet to come. In 2005, the company bought 624 betting shops from Stanley Leisure for £504 million. It was a long, drawn-out process, a bit like trying to get into the casino at the top of the Montague's long staircase, that led to an acquisition so large that the company had to immediately sell 78 betting shops to comply with the Competition Act.

As mentioned before, the biggest betting brand in the world is still William Hill. The online casino is available in 24 different languages and allows players to wager in 10 different currencies. The site supports betting on a variety of activities, including but not limited to sports, financial markets and the outcomes of games played in a casino, as well as the skill games found in the online casino. This is undoubtedly one of the safest and most regulated sites for online gamblers.